


Near Light

by utsu



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Royalty, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Monsters, Slow Build, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-21
Updated: 2016-11-21
Packaged: 2018-09-01 09:48:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8619688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/utsu/pseuds/utsu
Summary: There—a flash, golden and heated and attainable. She turned to it immediately, ignoring the strength of the invisible fingers around her throat, and when she turned this time she found purchase on something with weight, and shape, and color.
A man.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This story is not connected to Monster of the Tales. It is a similar world but it's more of an au of that au, if that makes sense.

Hyuuga Hinata had never been afraid of the shadows.

She had no need to be, really. It was that which she could see but couldn’t stop, that frightened her. Criticisms, her own failures, things that she had no power over. Those, she feared.

The shadows had never offered anything to her but a strange and sidelong comfort, a place to take the edge off of being someone with so much weight on her shoulders. She was only a young woman, just barely on the sharp side of adulthood; a kingdom was so heavy a burden to bear.

Not that she oversaw her kingdom, yet. Not that she was even in the running, actually. Hanabi was far more suited to the throne, to leading, and Hinata was far more comfortable in a knight’s role.

Not that she was yet a knight, either. There was so much _training_.

She was still young, after all, and the shadows were still a comfort rather than a concern.

It was far easier than it probably should’ve been to sneak away from sparring lessons, to seep into the overgrowth of the forest that just barely breached the familiar training grounds just outside of her home ground. Here, she wouldn’t have to fight. Here, she could relax.

The presence of wildlife around her was a comfort, as it always had been. Even with the sun chasing the backsides of the mountains, the sky an overturned palette of soft and darkening pastels, Hinata did not shiver. She moved through the brush with confidence, slowly, with heavy attention to the detail around her. She allowed her fingertips to slide over the delicacy of upturned leaves, tall enough to tangle around well-flushed hips. She paused to listen to the enchanting call of some airborne creature, moving through the branches overhead.

It was easy, here, and it always had been. Nature called to her and soothed the tension in her sore muscles, her perpetually straightened spine—members of the royal family did not _slouch_.

She followed a familiar trail through the forest and paid no mind to the scolding she would undoubtedly return to. She would find no pity in the gaze of her instructor, his anger carving the scar across his nose even more starkly into his features. She wondered for only a moment if it would be safer to go to her battle instructor, instead, but quickly shook the idea off. She could only imagine the disappointment in those scarlet eyes, and the undoubted criticism of the woman’s barbed posture.

She could do with less disappointment and reproach in her life. As the only member of her longstanding family to have never activated her Sight, she was already intimately familiar with letting people down.

She allowed these thoughts, concerns, to flit away from her as she always did amongst the trees. Almost effortlessly; they arose from her skin like particles of dust, returning to the stars overhead, from which she had come.

Something heavy in the undergrowth shifted, enough to draw her halfhearted attention, but no more. There were many creatures of the night that moved around her and with her when she did this—stole time from a regimen she had no choice in to be free amongst the night. It was not uncommon to hear the shifting of the forest around her, or the soft scurry of creatures under the brush. Even less uncommon was the flutter of wings overhead, and the otherwise curiously glowing eyes that gleamed back at her from the shadows.

This, too, was familiar. The Hyuuga family had special eyes; eyes that helped to elevate them to royal status ages ago. Tales of them spread throughout the lands, gregarious and growing the further out they spread. Those on the far east believed her family creatures of their own, with the ability to see through solid objects, through the earth. Those that were more fearful, edged against the ocean of the south called her family _omnipotent_ in hushed tones rarely heard. Her own neighboring village was under the impression that there wasn’t a limit to how far a Hyuuga could see, so long as they worked the muscles around their eyes like any other of their body—training them, as such, into weapons of their own. Any number of names and titles could describe them, and as was often common with rumors, none of them were completely truthful.

They did, however, share simple facets of truth.

Hyuuga were not all-seeing, or all-knowing. They could not see through solid objects, and their vision did not extend endlessly over the earth.

The most well-kept secret of the Hyuuga’s was this: that their special ability was not one of voluntary control. A Hyuuga royal could try as hard as her mortal body would allow her, push herself to endless limits, strain every muscle and vessel in her body and still what made her special would not arise.

It was temperamental that way. At least, that’s how the Hyuuga clan heads coped with it.

It was an easy secret to keep, most of the time. Until it wasn’t—until an enemy wasn’t afraid of the simple sight of the Hyuuga, the rumors that had built them up so high so as to look down on those around them.

It was then that the secret became difficult to keep, and even more difficult to manage. Because even in the face of lethal danger, usually the Sight would not arise. Her father was older than time itself, it seemed sometimes, and yet even he had no stark answer for how to bring about the Sight with purpose.

Neji had been studying his entire life, and he was still no further than calling it “temperamental.”

It wasn’t connected to fear, or self-preservation. Love didn’t bring it out like the simple dilation of mortal pupils, and it wasn’t something that came about with intention. Her cousin, the most stubbornly determined of people that she had ever known, was testament to that.

The Sight simply…chose. It obeyed nothing but itself, and appeared at random. At the dawning of civilization, Hinata’s ancestors scribed stories about the Sight appearing at random throughout the creation of their finest infrastructure. Her great grandmother experienced the Sight only so many times as to be able to count it on one hand, and the last was when she had been gardening. Hinata’s father had last felt the Sight when he suffered a debilitating wound to his spine, one that left him without feeling in his legs. The Sight had stayed with him for twenty-three hours before fading away and never once rearing its unpredictable head since.

Her father still described the feeling of it as only a moment, regardless of the recorded time he’d held onto it. Only a moment.

Hanabi, only just this side of an adolescent, had already experienced the Sight more frequently than their parents combined. It was why she had leapfrogged Hinata for the throne, and why the village trusted her wholeheartedly. They had begun to skew the meaning of the Sight, thinking it a sort of prophecy, even though there were no true signs of prediction after the episodes. Even though her family refuted the claims every time they were brought up. The people found some kind of hope in the lie, and they held onto it with white knuckles.

Hinata moved through the forest and contemplated facts of the Sight, and the memory of Hanabi’s last episode. It had occurred the first time she had slid her fingers over the arm of the alabaster throne, instantaneous upon the contact—a _sign_ , her father proclaimed. A sign of prosperity that the village accepted with open hearts and more hope than Hinata had imagined possible of them.

Hinata truly, truly hoped that they were right. She had more faith in Hanabi than anyone alive, and she was happy to defer the power and the leadership to her younger sister. She was proud to be one of her protectors, even if the job itself was tedious and ground Hinata’s own sense of hope right down to her bones. The friction of it burned her constantly, wore her out until she had to sneak out of training sessions with practiced ease, and find solace in the shadows of the forest.

Shadows, she thought, were useful. Not something to be frightened of. Not something to avoid.

The darkness and the uncertainty, the absolute lack of light to shine on anything resembling a secret—it helped Hinata to _breathe_.

The shadows protected her viciously, viscerally, an all-encompassing kind of possessiveness that allowed her to detach entirely from the expectations of her family, her village, and the world around her. As a Hyuuga, it was nearly impossible to have secrets from her own family. They were too closely involved, too present in every one of her steps through life. But it was the shadows she took solace in, really, not the forest. It was the shadows that sheltered her.

And it was the shadows, only the shadows, that knew of _her_ secret.

Hinata trailed her fingertips over the bark of a tree, felt the catch of her skin on a particularly sharp-edge, and felt heat bleed into her temples. She brought her fingertips in front of her eyes and saw more than the fine bead of blood pooling over her forefinger, but the heat that went through her skin, her bones. She dropped her hands to her sides and glanced through the forest, and every creature that breathed and every source of life that shifted under the fine trembling hands of the breeze became visible to her.

The Sight was a familiar heat, and it showed her every color the world had to offer, in a spectrum of intricacy that escaped normal dictation. It was a blend of seeing every shade of heat, and ever shade of color, and every shade of movement spread out so beautifully, in a six-kilometer-wide circumferential sweep.

Hinata could breathe again, here. And the shadows pressed in upon her with greedy fingers that she welcomed, a coolness touching against the sudden heat of her skin. She soothed them with ease, shushing the hiss of them with a gentle voice, and they subsided around her, hovering but not taking.

She was far enough into the forest to be unfamiliar with the territory, but still fear evaded her. She was not a confident person by nature, and anxiety and fear were constant companions she traveled with through life. But here, with the Sight a welcome heat under the sallow edge of her skin, she felt powerful. In control. That even fear itself was something that succumbed to the power of shadows, their all-encompassing bombardment of nothingness.

Hinata basked in it—welcomed the total lack of _all_.

And at the corner of her vision, outside of the thousands of shapes and blurs of color that were animals, insects, figments of dust and pollen and fragments of fur, something shifted in a way that was both familiar and unacquainted. She was reminded of the initial breech in her focus upon entering the forest, the single noise that had drawn her halfhearted attention, and she realized it was the same entity drawing her now.

Only, she didn’t know it, and she couldn’t _see_ it. She turned immediately, and headed in its direction without any sign of hesitation. The ground beneath her feet bleed through in ruddy shades of earth and mineral and dust, and her hands pushing aside tall tendrils of wildlife were spears of golden scarlet against the lush chimes of shifting color that made up the life of the forest.

If she were to describe it to someone who could never experience it, she wondered if it made sense to say that she could see the souls of everything in the world.

It was better that she didn’t, though. Especially considering that not even her own nosy family knew that she had ever once experienced the Sight, let alone that she could call upon it at will.

She moved cautiously through the bushes, the brambles and the trees. She felt ethereal, gliding more than walking, floating more than anchored to the earth as the mortal she was. The Sight could do that to a person—make them feel _other_.

She felt her brows furrow, frustration settling harshly into the smooth lines of her expression. No matter how close she got to the entity, a gaping maw of void, of nothingness, she still could not gauge it. There was no weight to it, no color, no shape. But still, she felt it lurking.

Each time she thought herself close enough— _just one more step and you’re mine_ —it moved out of her grasp, her Sight. She could hear herself breathing, panting, not from exertion but from wonder, from excitement and, yes, fear.

There was the fear she was so accustomed to. It leeched through her shadows, slicing with hunger, reaching for her throat. She felt the fingers of it on her windpipe, the slow pressure that blocked the heat of her temples from spreading down into her chest, and her fingertips grew cold, and numb, and—

_There_ —a flash, golden and heated and _attainable_. She turned to it immediately, ignoring the strength of the invisible fingers around her throat, and when she turned this time she found purchase on something with weight, and shape, and color.

A man.

Uncertainty rose within her and the fingers around her throat dissipated in a single blink, forgotten as shadows re-assembled around her, comforting in response to her sudden vulnerability.

How had she not seen him before? She should have seen him. He was close enough that she could smell the citrus of him on the breeze—had he been on the outskirts of her Sight, maybe, maybe she would have allowed herself to think she had simply not noticed him. That she had moved just enough to encapsulate him within her visual range.

But he was _close_ , and he was crouching low at the base of a tree and Hinata had to blink against the sight of him when she moved to see him unobstructed.

That had never happened before. There was something about him, the pressure of him, that she felt was familiar. It was wispy in her mind, something she couldn’t grab onto. The more she tried to name it, to grasp it, the more it evaded her. Fickle. And cunning.

Even more surprising than the man, perhaps, was the realization that with his presence Hinata had forgotten about the entity. She spun on her heel but didn’t move, waiting breathlessly for the pressure.

But it, too, evaded her. Gone. Not even a small tinge on the outskirts of her visual field, as it had been. Simply, gone.

She turned back to the man, several hundred yards away but unobstructed by trees and bushes. He gathered something in his hands, square hands, glowing so brightly Hinata was forced to blink, but scared to look away. Something shifted in the canopies, and even though Hinata was watching everything around her for six kilometers with pointed focus, _still_ it managed to sneak up on her.

The entity.

She felt the overwhelming pressure of it, the only part of its existence known to her, and this time it became unhinged. Hinata’s heart began to race as she searched for it, trying to extend her vision even further to no avail. The entity was invisible to her, nothing more than a crushing pressure that brought her to her knees. She felt the soil under her, the way the tiny rocks dug into her skin, and somewhere on her leg a creature crawled. Beside her, something slithered through the undergrowth, and Hinata didn’t care.

The pressure pushed her shoulders further until her hands were forced to dig into the soil as well, her spine bending under the weight of this vicious, unknowable malevolence. She found herself gasping, though there was no feeling of fingers around her throat. She simply couldn’t find air.

The pressure was unbearable, working so hard to break her, succeeding too easily—tears shook from her eyes, her cheeks, to the ground beneath her. She trembled.

And the man she could still see ahead of her lifted himself to his feet, cradling something close to the breadth of his chest. Hinata’s heart began to thunder in her chest and she didn’t know if it was this unbearable, crushing pressure or if it was the wildly racing thunder of her heart that shook her to the very core, making even the cage of her ribs shudder with vibration.

She didn’t understand, her mind crying out with pleas she knew no one could hear; there just wasn’t time.

And then, without warning, the pressure lifted; dissipated, disappeared—

And the mortal man took off like a fledgling deer, leaping and bounding without any hesitation for the brambles and the roots that lifted from the soil, unafraid and vigorous. The spine-snapping pressure was gone, the entity out of her grasp once more, but Hinata knew that she had to give chase. She couldn’t let an innocent man become the prey of whatever it was that was out there, just waiting to crush him into pierced dust.

There was a proper way to cease, to return to the stars, but it was not under the malicious force of a monster skewing shadows in Hinata’s own forest. She would _not_ allow this beast to harm this man. She was not yet a Knight, no, and she didn’t have a very strong will to be one, but it was times like this where the protection of innocents arose before her that she knew it was in her heart—ingrained, a root that took purchase some time before she was born.

She had to protect people.

Her spine was a quivering branch that couldn’t hold weight for several moments, even as she made it back up to her knees. She trembled from her shoulders to her fingertips, her knees quaking. When she finally felt strong enough to run, hers were the legs of a doe, just barely learning to walk.

Hinata pushed through the pain and followed the man trying valiantly to edge out of her vision. She stayed far enough away from him so that he didn’t know of her presence, not wanting to startle him any more than she had to. They ran and ran, for so long that Hinata felt her already training-tested muscles of her body extend past the point of screaming. They felt like pudding, like water sealed in a plastic bag.

The creatures around her were frazzled, fearful. They moved out of her way freely, giving her just as wide a berth as she gave the man, and she silently apologized to them. She had never wanted to startle them, to stir the natural peace of their home here in the forgiving shadows of the forest. It was only then that she wondered if the entity was feeding off of more than just Hinata and her random appearance, and the possibility of this man. What of the creatures that lived in this forest? Hinata felt rage curl through her, but it held a short half-life.

She was careless from exertion, one of her legs giving out briefly enough that she lilted into a tree trunk with her shoulder, hard enough to bring her crashing to the forest floor. She got up easily enough, grabbing at her shoulder, knowing there would be a gnarly bruise. It had been painful enough to cause her to gasp, and the impact itself had echoed through the shadows.

It was enough to startle the man she had gained on, and he stopped at the edge of a river Hinata had never known existed. Which was bizarre, and made no sense, because it was _huge_. Surely she would’ve known it on a map.

“Who are you?” The man called, and his voice was surprisingly steady for how long he had been running. His voice was husky, just this side of rasping, but it was more natural than a side-effect of exertion. It only took Hinata a few moments to decide to relinquish her control over the Sight. Mostly because she was exhausted, plain and simple. It took a lot of energy to hold the Sight steady, and more to do so while giving fervent, desperate chase through the forest for such a long time.

It didn’t hurt that Hinata wanted it kept a secret, even from this stranger, and that even before she relinquished control of it she still could not feel the presence of the beast that had nearly crushed her. That wasn’t very promising, she knew, and fear coiled around her with barbed edges all the while she stepped from the tree line, exposing her position to the stranger without much reservation.

His eyes leapt to her immediately, and there was caution in every line of him. Hinata was struck first, quite shamefully, by how beautiful he was. Even with his intimidating stance, eyes liquid and surefire with his nose scrunched in a sneer, Hinata found him stunning. Strong shoulders and a lean waist, with clothing that was torn and charred. Her eyes glanced down to what he held in his arms, the gentled chaos of berries and brambles, tucked so gently against his expansive chest. She wondered if he lived in her village, and had simply been taking a respite in the forest as she had.

Or if the shadows were even more a home for him than they were for her.

“Hello,” she called, and her voice trembled with nerves, with exertion, with fear. She couldn’t feel the pressure, that unbearable pressure, but her heart was still thundering behind her rib cage. She had to get this man to safety—out of the forest, out of the shadows. For once, they did not feel welcoming to her.

The man hesitated at her voice, something of a shiver running over him before his eyebrows furrowed once more. Hinata gauged his expression, open distrust, and frowned. She approached him cautiously, slowly, even as her hands shook. She wanted to re-activate the Sight, to see if the creature was looming in the shadows around them, closing in for the kill. They were together now, two easy targets. Hinata nearly cursed.

“Do you live in the village near here?” She asked. “Hidden in the Leaves?”

The man studied her, his eyes seeming to miss nothing. There was nothing decidedly special about them, except that they were full of fire Hinata could almost feel, even several feet away from him.

The man stayed silent for several long moments, and Hinata fought the urge to fidget. He studied her carefully, never once letting his guard down, and she had to wonder what kind of life he had lived.

What kind of life he may still be living.

“No,” he called, with no discernable inflection. “What do you want?”

Strange, Hinata thought, pursing her lips. He responded to her like she was the threat, even when she was at her most unimposing. She wasn’t even in a defensive stance, which may have literally made her battle instructor faint had she heard of this. Which is to say that she would most certainly _not_ be hearing of this, as far as stances and self-preservation goes.

Hinata gauged the man’s expression and countenance once more before speaking, wondering how honest she could be with him. Something about his appearance, guileless while guarded, holding those shrubs so gently, had her going with honesty.

“It’s dangerous here,” she began, glancing around her at the forest around them, the glistening silver surface of the river behind him. She missed the sudden tension of his frame at the words, the way a single breath slipped through his parted lips as though he’d been struck. She continued to survey their surroundings, lifting her hands to rub idly at the goosebumps along her arms. She wasn’t cold—the run had left her feeling overheated, if anything—but the knowledge that there could be that absence of existence with only the presence of mind-crushing pressure lurking just on the outskirts of their vision frightened her.

“I don’t know what it is. It’s hard to explain it,” She continued, frustrated at the reminder that she couldn’t even _see_ it. What good was the Sight if it was blind to the real threats of their world?

“What it is,” the man said, tone pitched low and almost curiously. Hinata’s eyes leapt back to him, genuine in their expression of fear. She nodded her head, and glanced around again just as the man’s eyes dropped to her hands, and the way she was rubbing so carefully at her own skin. A habit in response to fear, to uncertainty. His eyes came back to hers and she swallowed.

“I don’t know what it is,” she repeated, at a loss for words. Just thinking about it made her tremble, her heart squeezing painfully in her chest. She was probably exacerbating her already present murmur, but there was only so much she could do against the fear. It was difficult, nearly impossible, to feel safe in the face of something you couldn’t even comprehend—something, even, that had already tried to kill her. “I…I just know it’s dangerous. I saw you just afterwards.”

The man turned his head a fraction, a curious shift to study her further. He still hadn’t relaxed out of his tensed posture, caught somewhere between a defensive stance and poised to flee at any given moment. His expression lost some of its sharp edges, though Hinata imagined there was no reducing the sharpness of that gaze; or the square edge of his jaw, for that matter.

“This danger,” he began, and Hinata’s attention turned entirely to him. This was the first time he had mentioned it, and she wondered if he had felt it. She wondered how close to being crushed he had been, before she had found him—maybe she had been a distraction, as the beast closed in on this stranger. Maybe she had taken his place, however temporarily.

But then, why had she been set free?

“You felt it?”

“Yes,” she nodded her head, stepping closer to him when he made no move to shift his posture, and didn’t seem to tense even when she was close enough that she didn’t have to raise her voice for him to hear her. There were still several feet between them, but the clearing they stood in was quiet except for the babbling of the river. It was gentle under the rising moonlight, not yet rushing as she imagined it might be in the early morning when the snow began to melt under the welcoming sun.

Hinata edged carefully around the truth with her words, not wanting to give hints that might give away her secret.  “I couldn’t…see what it was. Whatever it was.”

The man watched her expression, his deep ocean eyes tracing the lines of her face with an intensity that had her blushing against her will. She wanted to turn and hide it, but she didn’t want to seem untrustworthy either. Her heart was still racing, perhaps loudly enough that he could hear it in the stillness of the clearing. She wanted to retreat, to grab his hand and race the two of them out of the forest and back into the relative safety of her village. There was an army, there, they could do something—right?

She wasn’t entirely certain. How did you fight against a beast that you couldn’t see or hear or reach, but which could crush you effortlessly?

“We have to go,” she said, uncaring of how abrupt it was. Her tone was insistent. “I’m glad that I found you. I can’t leave you here. It’s _dangerous_.”

The man said nothing to that. He tilted his head at her, a surprisingly animalistic gesture. His lips moved, just barely enough for it to catch Hinata’s attention, and it almost looked like he was saying something—like he was speaking to someone. She saw his right hand fist at his side, tucked against his ribs and still holding his treasure, and she wondered at it a moment before the strained lines of his body relaxed, nearly all at once. He straightened back up and stood casually, his fingers releasing out of the fist he had made. Hinata felt panic licking up her spine the longer they stood there, doing nothing to protect themselves. Her fingers shook.

“You...” he began, stopping once to clear his throat and study her again. His eyes were so shrewd, his stare sharp and unblinking, it made Hinata nervous. There was something…different about those eyes. Secrets hidden in the depths of them, of which Hinata did not have the time to delve into.

“You followed me here?” He said at last, and the hesitance belied a sort of potential for surrender, as if her answer would shift his opinion of her. She wondered what kind of opinion he had made, in the short time since having met her. They didn’t even know each other’s names.

“Yes, of course,” she began urgently, eyes still flickering around in blatant concern.

“Even though it’s…dangerous.” He framed it as a question, a general inquiry, and Hinata wondered why he didn’t seem to be taking her seriously. Her panic was not feigned.

“ _Yes_ ,” she insisted, her tone nearly pleading. And then, because she needed him to understand, and _soon_ , she tried to explain. Her eyes stayed on the trees, even as she said, “I felt something…something in the shadows, the canopies, moving slowly, like a beast, like I was being—”

_Hunted._

The word was heavy, sharp like jagged stone, and it cut into her. She could feel it resonate through her, almost as though it had been more than a thought, as though—

She glanced away from the tree line and met the stranger’s stare, all signs of his tension, his distrust, his wariness of her…gone. She traced the shape of the word on his lips and understood that it was heavier than her thoughts because he had _spoken it_.

He stood there, so calmly, and Hinata blinked, and trembled. Something was wrong, something was shifting again in the shadows, and this man he was suddenly so calm where had his tension gone and why was he staring at her with those sharp eyes, his head tilted just _so_.

“We have to go,” she breathed, so quietly she doubted he could hear her. She stumbled backwards, and that was fine, both the breathlessness and the retreat, because she wasn’t certain who she was even talking to outside of herself anymore. She stumbled further back and the man watched her every step without blinking, and Hinata realized all at once exactly what that unflinching stare reminded her of.

The steadiness of it, and the way that his muscles coiled beneath his skin, tensed and ready to spring at any given moment. A façade of calm wrapped tight around something deeper, something darker, and the way that he traced every single one of her steps with unerring accuracy. She didn’t need to activate her Sight to know his heart was sure, not racing, not shaken. His hands were steady, he didn’t tremble. He watched, and she stumbled back and away from him, and she knew what that stare meant, what this stranger was, the now all too familiar pressure starting to build—

A predator.

Hinata turned and _ran_.

**Author's Note:**

> This is incomplete and will remain so until I have the time to add to it. It might also become a series of monster au related fics. Who knows (not me!). Thank you for reading! : )


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